Murano, the series of islands linked by bridges in Italy’s Venetian Lagoon, is home to one of the world’s oldest, continuously running, family businesses – Barovier & Toso. It was here that in 1295, the Barovier family began the tradition and specific technique of decorative glass making that is still used by the company today.

One family member in particular, Angelo Barovier, was responsible for catapulting the company into international stardom. With a scientific education that led him to continuously experiment with the chemical makeup and physical properties of glass, Angelo discovered how to create a flawlessly clear transparent glass, known as crystalline. The creation fitted in perfectly with the beauty ideals of the Renaissance and the company didn’t look back.

By the end of the sixteenth century, three Barovier brothers had their own glassmaking factories on Murano, each of which had their own trademark: an angel, a bell and a star. Today, these three symbols appear together in the Barovier crest. It wasn’t until 1936, that the Barovier family merged with the Toso family’s Fratelli Toso Glassworks, to form Barovier & Toso. Today the company’s creations are used by many of the world’s biggest brands, from Louis Vuitton and Cartier, to the Four Seasons and Ritz-Carlton hotels.

Jacopo Barovier – Barovier&Toso: a Company between past and futureBarovier&Toso
Published on 15 Mar 2012

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Chiso: The Kimono Makers
千總：きもの製作

Image: chiso.co.jp

Founded in Kyoto in 1555, Kimono making company Chiso is still operating to the same exacting standards. The kimonos are manufactured by a family business managed by the Nishimura family that have worked for Chiso for 15 generations.

The company, which has a manufacturing policy of “the creation of beautiful items”, often uses famous painters to design kimonos but also draws from its own library that’s crammed with books and filing cabinets filled with kimono designs dating back hundreds of years. These designs are then drawn on the silk fabric with a blue liquid made of a type of grass, purple spiderwort. The artist will then spend about a month painting the pattern onto the kimono using sometimes up to 50 dyes. Recently, Chiso has been using computers in the design process. It now sends digital versions to clients to show potential mixes of pattern, colour and material.

Image: mozarteum.at / Mozart’s Salzburg Konzertvioline, most likely built by a member of the Klotz family

Violin making runs deep in the small village of Mittenwald, about 100 kilometres from Munich. It was here that Matthias Klotz settled in around 1685, opened up a lute making workshop and later founded the Mittenwald school of violin making. Members of the Klotz family passed on their trade to the families in the village and it wasn’t long before the family name, along with the town, became synonymous with great violin making. So great were the violins, in fact, that Mozart himself composed and performed five violin concertos and wrote the string component of many other works with a Klotz.

Violin production from Mittenwald was so prolific that at one point: “nine-tenths of the violins which pass in the world as [reputable violin label] ‘Stainers’ were made by the Klotz family and their followers”, according to contributor Edward John Payne in “A Dictionary of Music and Musicians” in 1900.